May 04, 2012

My Emily Dickinson by Timothy O'Keefe

The earth has many keys.

Where melody is not

Is the unknown peninsula.

Beauty is nature's fact.

But witness for the land,

And witness for the sea,

The cricket is her utmost

Of elegy to me.

-Emily Dickinson

Yesterday I wrote about humility in poetry, a process by which one recognizes the moment of awestruck language (in mind and speech) and one's inability to say anything definitive for that moment. One responds without "speaking to"—there is no authority, because there is no seeking after consequence. Instead, consequence finds the moment of articulation, the sphere of its purity. Can't the same be said for humility in action? We have all witnessed false humility—an expression whose aim is to highlight the selflessness of the person that expresses it. In short, vanity in its most egregious form. And yet, if all humble acts originate in some one or group of individuals, can they ever truly avoid the vanity trap? I used to doubt that they could. And there's Emily Dickinson, the humble action of this poem, the untroubled smallness of its voice. We do not see the beacon. We see its light.

Yesterday I wrote about humility in poetry, a process by which one recognizes the moment of awestruck language (in mind and speech) and one's inability to say anything definitive for that moment. One responds without "speaking to"—there is no authority, because there is no seeking after consequence. Instead, consequence finds the moment of articulation, the sphere of its purity. Can't the same be said for humility in action? We have all witnessed false humility—an expression whose aim is to highlight the selflessness of the person that expresses it. In short, vanity in its most egregious form. And yet, if all humble acts originate in some one or group of individuals, can they ever truly avoid the vanity trap? I used to doubt that they could. And there's Emily Dickinson, the humble action of this poem, the untroubled smallness of its voice. We do not see the beacon. We see its light.